An interview with Peter "Peavy" Wagner – frontman and founder of the legendary German band Rage.

The name of your band evokes strong emotions and a state of turmoil. So how has your musical way of expressing these feelings changed over the course of 40 years of your career?

In the beginning of the band´s career the music sounded a bit more nervous, a bit more unfocused, maybe a bit more naiv, probably caused by our youth and less experience. Over the years I learned a lot about songwriting, arranging and got better in concentrating a song to a special feeling, to express the message, I learned that sometimes less is more, giving room the instruments and voicings, so I was able to express my ideas the way I wanted. 

Many bands from the '80s mellow their sound with age but you still manage to hit really hard. So what is the source of this primal, unending aggression in your music? 

We just love it that way. Although we have a ballad or more complex song here and there, we feel that the band´s main focus shall be agressive, fast and pounding metal songs, that jump in your face, get in your ears with good melodies, never slipping into some cheasiness...

Your previous double album, "Afterlifelines", was dark and dystopian. Where did the idea come from to make such a drastic shift toward light, positive energy, and optimism on "A New World Rising"?

I was just thinking about a natural twist of things. After a system is down at the bottom it can naturally just get better, after night comes day, so I liked the idea to write about a positive development, especially in such difficult times we have these days.

I ask this because you once said that the world is drowning in manipulation and negative emotions. Was recording such an energetic album a kind of rebellion against that reality for you? 

That´s a nice description, yes, you could say so. We are just musicians, we can´t do that much to create a better world, only to spread some positive energy to those who could need it.

"A New World Rising" is the 27th album in your discography. Do you still feel the same relentless need to create new music?

I wouldn´t call it a need, but it´s one of the nicest things on earth to create music, get in touch with that inner voice, connect to the universal flow and bring new songs to life. It makes you just feel good, so I never wanna stop this.


Well, you've gone through the cassette and vinyl times, through the CD era, all the way to streaming. What is your biggest worry, and what is your greatest hope regarding the current music industry? 

It´s surely a big problem for musicians that everyone can create easily some kind of sound and songs with A.I., but at the same time I know that this is not the same as real composed and hand played music. A.I. can just use what is already there , its impossible for this technology to create something really new. Maybe some music styles, that already consisted mostly from sample sounds, like techno, Rap or all this elektro stuff, however it´s called, this can be easily excanged with A.I. stuff, as it was anyway just samples glued together. But real handmade music will have a future, there´s no substitute…

Your big passion, aside from music itself, is collecting and gathering fossils and old bones. Has this archaeological hobby ever influenced the lyrics of your songs?  

A bit yes, I think. To have these old witnesses of life from ancient times in your hand changes your view on life and it´s incredible long time distances to my world. It´s not that I write about the bones themselves but about the insights that they give to me.

You have an impressive collection. If you had to choose the most unique item from your collections, what would it be and why? 

Actually each piece is unique, as every living being and so also it´s remains is unique. But of course there´s some nice rarities in my collection. I have human remains from skeletal bones to complete skulls that date back to the stone age, neolithik to Mesolithik age, that´s 5 000 up to 50 000 years before present, same goes for plenty of animal skulls and bones from that ages. And I also have many recent animal and human bones, skulls and skeletons, outstanding examples may be mounted skeletons of all the big Apes (Gorilla, Chimp and Orang Utan), of course with the official permissions. Impressive is also a full mounted Elk Skeleton.

Back to music, Soundchaser – Rage's mascot – is a symbol as recognizable as Iron Maiden's Eddie. If it came to life today and spoke to all of us, how would it assess the state of the modern world?  

It would surely say: Let´s straighten our backs and get our shit together, let´s make a good world for everyone !

So at the end – if your Soundchaser had its own instrument, what would it most likely resemble?

As it is a biomecanical it would use a machine that includes all necessary instruments to play some ass kicking loud metal!

Thank you for your time! It was a great honor for me.  

Thank you, too! All my greetings to the Metalheads that read this...